Sea of Thieves’ Cursed Sails update is live with new sea content, though not kraken and skeleton forts for now

Arr mateys, are you all ready for today’s deployment of Sea of Thieves’ Cursed Sails? Because it’s just gone live with a new video and patch notes to boot. The key part of the update is the campaign itself – and its cursed skeleton ships that basically create a ghostly NPC threat across the game’s seas.

“Pirate dominion on the Sea of Thieves is being challenged, by the dead! Skeletons are taking to the waters in grim galleons, united and spurred on by a mysterious captain. Armed with cursed cannonballs that sow chaos and confusion, the dead make war on the living in Cursed Sails! Watch out for banners on the Outposts, calling you out to battle skeleton ships over the course of three weeks. You can also take a break from the action to investigate the source of the skeleton scourge, following a tale of greed and madness starting with a hint from the Bilge Rats.”

The update’s got the three-person Brigantine and the alliance system too. Rare does note that it’s disabled the kraken and skeleton forts for now as it works out some performance kinks with them. Moreover, “Some players may continue to hear muffled sound after being fired from a cannon,” Rare says, but we think that might be the least of those players’ worries at that point.

Not long to go now until Cursed Sails is live! Join Executive Producer Joe as he talks you through what to expect in our new free content update that you'll be able to play in less than half an hour: https://t.co/Bm7W9xbLyV

This is the first update that feels like it’s hit all the right cords for me. The skeleton ships are pretty intense encounters that challenge multiple crews, and the alliance system is a great way to have folks working together (though friendly fire isn’t disabled between crews, keep that in mind) and benefiting from it.

Not only do the skeleton ships reward commendations that earn doubloons and whatnot, but they also have a truckton of loot you’d normally get only from Skeleton Fortresses. Everyone in the alliance gets a split of the profits as well so it encourages folks to keep working together.

Tbh I think this is the first ‘great’ patch to come out of Sea of Thieves. Hungering Deep was too gimmicky and while the Megalodon fight was intense the setup for it was insanely stupid. Skeleton thrones was also a rather cheap gimmick, gunpowder skellies was nice but again the novelty wore off, and the mermaid statues were also kind of neat but far too grindy. There’s obviously still some grind to be had with skeleton ships and such, and I think it is a bit annoying that you have to wait in-game days in order to battle a specific crew (from my understanding 1 game hour = 1 IRL minute) so you have to wait potentially a few hours for the next one to be available.

But so far the skeleton ship battles have been awesome and quite intense, especially since each crew uses a different cursed cannonball which inflicts different effects on you/your ship (first two I’ve faced off have had cannonballs that make you drunk and then cannonballs that force you to dance for 5 seconds or so).

Also I guess one more critic bit: the Brigantine. Yikes. That thing looks like it was rather hastily thrown together. It also seems to be faster than a Galleon when moving with the wind while also having better maneuverability… I get the feeling that this thing will be getting iterated on, ’cause right now it looks quite ugly/basic and also seems to be a little too good with its mobility.

Anyway, beyond that I don’t really have any complaints for Cursed Sails so far. It’s a very great step in a better direction for Sea of Thieves, and this is the type of content I’d like to see more of.